Objectively, humanity has never fared better. We live longer, we fight less, and we produce much more. At the same time, fear and anxiety pervade. Abyss & Horizon, an existential investigation into this paradox, suggests that it has become the defining feature of our age, amounting to humanity’s “midlife crisis.” Why the paradox and what are its implications? I identify four factors: (1) peace and prosperity have been unequally distributed; (2) globalization has diffused disinformation, frustration and fears; (3) securing tangible assets has fostered the seeking of intangible causes, including moral meaning; (4) politics, a long-time hub of socio-moral orders, have become to many increasingly meaningless. Abyss & Horizon traces how we have arrived at this existential crisis of legitimacy, and dissects the reactive implications: The “tribe’s return” and populism, God’s resurrection and the resort to scientific legitimation, the poverty of pragmatism, the descent into warlike politics, and the escape to post-political nihilism.

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